


Vigilante

by Carrigan



Series: ZAP Verse [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Based on a Tumblr Post, Break Up, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:30:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7400935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carrigan/pseuds/Carrigan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a prompt from Tumblr: "we bumped into each other in the street and you were grinning like a cocky asshole the whole time so i stalked off only to realise i’m wearing your shirt"</p><p>Zayn wants to break up, except he doesn't. Liam wants to make Zayn happy. A Batman tanktop brings them back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vigilante

“You have got to be kidding me.”

 

Liam swings around guiltily at the sound of Zayn’s voice, and Zayn doesn’t feel any of his usually fondness at the caught look on Liam’s face. When he said he needed a break from them right now, he’d meant it. So to see Liam here, in his safe space, is more than a little aggravating.

 

Every Saturday morning after payday, Zayn comes to this specific comic book store and snags a few new things. It’s been his tradition since he moved here for Uni, and for a while was a tradition shared by him and Liam. Until Liam’s new job prevented him from seeing anything outside of his office walls.

 

“You weren’t answering your phone, so I just wanted to -”

 

“You wanted to what?” Zayn interrupts him before he can start in on his usual bullshit. He already knows exactly what Liam’s going to say - he has this speech memorized. “I told you I don’t want to talk to you. Not now, maybe not ever. I don’t want _anything_ to do with you. I told you I was done with this shit. Do you hear me? Are you even _listening_ to me?”

 

It's Zayn’s biggest pet peeve and the largest sore spot of their relationship; Zayn feels like everything he says to Liam lately has been going in one ear and out the other. Then Liam will just respond with whatever he thinks Zayn wants to hear. Now he’s just staring at Zayn’s chest, not even pretending to listen.

 

“What the _fuck_ do you want, Liam?” The sharpness in Zayn’s voice draws Liam’s attention back to him, and there’s a whole new unexplored level of frustrating. Zayn has to curse and cross his arms and be on the verge of rage for Liam to even respond. There was a time when Liam could tell something was wrong from a twitch in Zayn’s eyebrows. Now he can be standing in public, basically telling Liam to go fuck himself, and he’s cool as a cucumber.

 

Zayn doesn’t know what would be worse: if Liam truly doesn’t understand how upset he is, or doesn’t give enough of a shit to care.

 

“I told my mum you’re mad at me, and she reamed me out. She helped me realize some things we need to talk about.” He seems distracted, and that aggravates Zayn even more. He can’t even focus on their relationship when he’s standing here trying to win Zayn back? What a joke.

 

“You think I give a shit right now about what you want? How many times have I got to say it before you understand? I said we’re _done_ , so get that through your -”

 

“We’re not done.” Liam’s voice cuts through Zayn’s sentence, and he’s taken aback. There’s a surety to the set of Liam’s jaw, and a smugness to his eyes that he only gets when he absolutely knows that he’s right. It’s the look he gets when he knows he’s just won something, and it raises all of Zayn’s hackles.

 

“Excuse me?” Zayn’s trying to hide his confusion, but there’s still an undercurrent of tense anger there at Liam’s audacity. Who the fuck does he think he is? How can he stand here, after Zayn had practically begged for months for him to act like he gave a shit, and tell Zayn _anything_?

 

“I said,” Liam starts, taking a step toward Zayn, “That we’re not done. Because I love you enough to want to make this work, and fix everything that I fucked up. And you love me enough to let me try.” His eyes fall down to Zayn’s chest again and he reaches his hand out like he can’t help himself, then drags his thumb along the jut of Zayn’s exposed collarbone.

 

Zayn tries to find something to say, but it’s like all his words are trapped in his chest. This feels so much like when they first started out, before they were in a “long-term commitment”. Back when they actually talked about things, and told each other how they felt, and understood each other.

 

“I was thinking we could do dinner? Around 8, maybe? I’ll come to your flat, and if you really don’t want to talk to me then you don’t have to answer the door. I’ll just go away and leave you alone.” This is the part of Liam that’s always left him a little breathless and slightly unbalanced like his equilibrium is off. Liam has this way of talking to Zayn that’s so inviting but demanding at the same time, like he’s giving Zayn a choice but there’s also an expectation. Like he knows Zayn still loves him (he does) and he knows Zayn wants them to be together (he does) and knows Zayn is gonna open the door at 8 (he will).

 

Zayn reaches up to push Liam’s hand away, but in turn he just gently grabs Zayn’s hand then massages his palm like he used to when Zayn’s hand would cramp after hours of drawing. He looks down at their intertwined fingers and frowns, then looks back up at Zayn, with a sad twist to his mouth. The smugness from before is gone, and now he looks lost.

 

“Regardless of everything else, no matter what happens with us, I do love you.” His face is so serious when he says it that Zayn stops breathing for fear of breaking this moment. “There’s some changes happening that I can’t imagine doing if you’re not with me, by my side, and I just…” He runs out of words then hangs his head, looking the part of downtrodden ex-boyfriend, and Zayn kind of hates how much he loves this man.

 

Almost every single part of him wants to take Liam somewhere quiet so they can talk about every single thing on his mind, but that’s not what Zayn had thought he’d wanted when he woke up this morning. He was so sure he was done this time, had really convinced himself that this was it, that come hell or high water he was going to get over Liam. But here they are, and Zayn’s just as in love with him as he has been for the past 3 years.

 

Zayn is feeling incredibly overwhelmed, so he pulls his hand from Liam’s and walks away. He doesn’t look back, and he doesn’t stop walking until he’s in the safety of his flat and leaning against the inside of his front door. He lets his head thump back against the unyielding metal, and sighs deeply.

 

When he rubs his hand over the spot on his collarbone Liam had touched, it still tingles like he’s been branded by Liam’s fingertips. Zayn can’t help but look down to see if there was a physical mark left, even though he knows there isn’t one. It’s when he looks down that he finally remembers what he left home wearing this morning, and immediately understands why Liam came to the admittedly correct conclusion that Zayn is nowhere near over him.

 

It makes sense to go to a comic book store wearing a comic book shirt, so Zayn hadn’t given a second thought to throwing on the first Batman tank top he saw in his drawer that morning. It just so happens coincidentally and embarrassingly enough, that this is what Liam was wearing the first time they’d met. Zayn had claimed it over the years, and it was for all purposes his now.

 

Putting the top on had felt like bringing a small reminder of home with you when you went on vacation, or packing your favorite stuffed animal when you went away with Uni. Zayn, for all his posturing that he wanted to be over Liam, couldn’t even go a day without trying to carry a part of Liam with him. He’d seen the top, sitting innocuously on top of some other non-descript tshirts, and wanted to go back to their first date in that club.

 

Zayn fists his hands in the top, right over the Batman logo, and swallows past the knot in this throat. What does it say about him if he was the one who wanted them to break up, yet he grabs the first thing in sight that reminds him of their first memory together? He sighs again and lets go of the shirt, tries to smooth out the wrinkles.

 

He walks over to the couch and flops down, then drops his head into his hands. Liam always says that Zayn’s greatest talent is wallowing, and this right here feels like a champion self-pity session. He tries to sort through his thoughts, but everything in his head feels scrambled.

 

The only thing he’s sure of, in this moment, is that he loves Liam. He loves Liam, and wants to be with Liam, and Zayn just wishes all the rest of it didn’t have to be so complicated.

 

Zayn sits up and leans his head against the back of the couch, then rubs his hands tiredly against his face. This morning is already so exhausting, and when he pulls his phone from from his pocket to check the time he sees that it’s not even 11 yet. He got up early, and didn’t even get to buy any comics books.

 

He sighs again, because no one’s around to tell him to stop, and decides a nap is in order. He’ll call Harry later, or Harry will call him, because Liam will tell Niall, and Niall will tell Harry. Their friend group is small but secure, and if one of them knows something then all of them do. That means Harry will be by later to “help him choose an outfit and offer emotional support”, which in reality translates to “cooing over Zayn and drinking all his alcohol.”

 

Zayn shuffles down the hallway to his bedroom, pulls off his outside clothes, and crawls into bed. He can catch almost a full day of sleep before all of Harry’s everything infiltrates his flat, and Liam shows up for dinner. Until then, he just wants to sleep and pretend that everything is a lot easier than what reality has presented.

 

When he dreams, Liam is a beloved superhero, known by all and hailed as the pride of England. Zayn is a masked vigilante labelled as an anti-hero and half of Scotland Yard wants him arrested. When Liam asks him why he won’t join forces with the other heros, why he won’t bring all his good deeds to the light, Zayn just shakes his head. Says that he belongs in the dark, with the evils and the shadows.

 

Liam disagrees, but Zayn knows. Liam is the only reason he’s not holed up in some dark pit, wasting away while the loneliness eat at his soul. He doesn’t understand, he’ll never understand, not really, because he’s never seen the worst parts of Zayn. He’s never seen the sad, angry, hurting parts that only disappear when Liam’s around.

 

He tries to explain, but before long there’s another emergency and Liam has to go save a city. Zayn watches him leave, and feels the ugliness return. Liam has always been the best part of Zayn, the only part worth showing to the world, and when he’s not around Zayn goes back to being the invisible thing skulking around dark corners.

 

One day, Liam will be the kind of hero that realizes he can leave Zayn behind. Liam is a figure that lives in the light, and what kind of villain would Zayn be if he turned Liam into a shadow instead? Zayn leaves after Liam’s gone, and returns to being the cold, lonely thing he is without him.

 

Zayn wakes up to Harry’s ringtone, and a feeling of loss in his chest. He rolls out of bed and answers the call, knowing Harry’s probably already at his front door. His bedroom is pitch black when he walks out of it, and while Harry chatters away on the other line, he thinks he’d like to just go back to bed and fade away until no one could find him.

 

But he knows that eventually, Liam would come in, all bright and stunning and streaked with light, and Zayn would be a goner all over again. Zayn can’t tell if it’s worse to be so dependent on Liam’s utter radiance, or to have never had it at all. Sometimes he wonders if he’s really a person, or just a fragment of Liam’s universe, floating around in his orbit. He didn’t think love was supposed to feel this way, like loss and purity and sickness and completion. But he also doesn’t think he’d be able to live any other way.

 

What a ridiculous thought, to think he could live without Liam. Completely absurd, the idea that he’d even want to do such a thing. Completely pointless, to try and not love him.

 

When he answers the knock at the door, it isn’t Harry on the other side but Liam. He hangs up on Harry, who surely concocted this, and gapes at Liam from the other side of the doorway.

 

“I know I’m early, but Haz thought you might be kind of down, so I just, figured I’d try?” He shrugs, like it’s no goddamn big deal, and Zayn just wants to hug him and steal all that warmth that Liam holds inside himself. He does, stops bothering to try and act like they both don’t know where this is going, just throws himself into Liam’s arms and lets himself be caught.

 

“I hate it when you’re gone,” he says, voice small and sad, just like he feels. His face is pressed into Liam’s shoulder, and no matter how impractical it is he never wants to let go. “Fucking hate it.” He wipes his tears on Liam’s neck because Zayn knows he won’t say anything, won’t mention it in order to save Zayn’s pride.

 

“Yeah, well, let’s never do that again. Ever.” His voice is watery as well, and Liam’s arms tighten around his waist. It feels like coming back home after a long day, and being greeted by the only face you wanted to see. It’s the only thing Zayn wants to feel, and he never wants this moment to stop.

 

Utterly useless, he thinks, to try not to love him. So why even try? Zayn thinks this could be just fine for the rest of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this based on a prompt I received on my tumblr @ pinklemonadelucozade.tumblr.com
> 
> Come by and say hello, or to tell me what you think, or leave me prompts.
> 
> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it (:


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